The cusp of a new year is a traditional time for reflecting on the past year and anticipating what lies ahead. We found this short article, which we think provides PR pros an excellent guide to public relations in 2018. Here’s a sampling:

All PR is tech PR
As media continues to digitize, it’ll be adopting emerging technologies into its day-to-day content production. The rise of emerging tech—virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence—affects and informs media’s push for digital. It’s a new content sandbox for publishers and their advertisers to operate in creatively, free of print’s two-dimensional limitations.

Enjoy, and get ready! Read more here. And, be sure to let us know how you see public relations in the coming year.

Worth repeating … we ran across this article a short time ago and thought it caught the essence of what it’s like for PR pros and marketers in this new world order of content development and social media. So we’re re-blogging it here to share ideas on how you can competitively maximize the potential of a truly integrated marketing effort. We’re sure you’ll enjoy reading, and perhaps learn some new ideas too! Be sure to let us know below.

From social selling to new opportunities with mobile advertising, every marketing organization now has a cornucopia of channels through which to work its magic.

Yet, different channels and opportunities demand different skills, and the effort needed to coordinate all the necessary components and team members is immense. It can be confusing at best, unproductive at worst.

Let’s take a simple example: an infographic.

You’ve compiled the information and applied beautiful design. Now what? You probably have 10 different channels to send it through. Should one person own every channel and strategy for promotion? I mean, it’s just a simple infographic, right?

Can developing expertise in digital advertising become a promising new specialty for growth and expansion in public relations? We are among others asking this question lately because of the unfavorable changes occurring in and prognostications about the decline of advertising agencies.

“We believe that the combination of public relations, digital and research will allow us to build a new kind of marketing communications firm that can help clients both promote and protect their brands. … [And] to challenge the status quo, which has placed advertising agencies as the first among equals.”

Challenges to the established advertising industry

Foremski goes on to make several well-taken points:

▶ The Internet is a publishing technology that now works in both directions

▶ Computer screens are no longer one-sided; they now work on both sides

▶ Our communications and computing technologies now represent a new kind of Gutenberg press—reconfigurable on all ends of the equation.

He closes his article by noting that there’s lots of money at stake, and how the PR industry responds to this phenomenon will be interesting to note throughout 2014.

▶ There will be a thriving market for smaller, more agile, digital shops and for specialists

Opportunities for Public Relations

Given this unarguable reality, how can PR pros prepare and capitalize on such an unprecedented opportunity for impact and growth? Here’s our view:

1) Get Onboard. Make sure you’re online: publishing; monitoring and adapting to analytics; joining the conversation.

2) Dive Deeper. Get actively involved in creating and managing digital/mobile advertising campaigns, through Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., as well as on social media through Facebook, Twitter, etc. Utilize the customization and analytical tools that are available through each platform.

3) Upgrade Production Skills. YouTube, Vimeo, and even smartphones, and a host of other technologies and platforms, now make it incredibly easy to produce and upload video content.

4) Collaborate. Become, or team with other pros, who are certified digital specialists. There are many options—Google Partners (formerly Google Adwords); Yahoo!; Bing Ads (formerly MSN Ad Center; SEO certification; Facebook, etc.—although you needn’t specialize in them all. There’s lots of shared knowledge and overlap that can be applied across platforms.

PostScript

We, at MediaWorks, owner and curator of PRDoctorChicago, are trained and have practical experience in publishing, online content development, and digital campaigns. Our founder, Muriel Jackson, is certified in public relations and search engine marketing. If you need help, we’re ready to help you solve your communications issue and work through the external changes occurring in the media industries.

We welcome the opportunity to talk to you about your next project. Feel free to start the dialogue by using the comment form below.

Where would we be without the Internet? I know it’s an obvious statement, but do

you ever ponder the question? Sometimes, usually following some great find online, I think, how would I ever have come across this info if not on the ‘Net? So, in that spirit of sharing, I’m here today to share some especially helpful posts from the Web.

First, if you’re in PR and have been preoccupied with—or in some cases, maybe just vaguely aware of—the terms content marketing and thought leadership, here’s two must-read articles to help you understand these trends that have taken hold in the industry. Yes, there may be a lot of good reads on the topic out there, but I think AdAge’s article, “Solving the Content Creation Conundrum,” is the one that may help get you up to speed most quickly.

“As marketers we all know that storytelling is an essential part of connecting with prospects and customers. Scott Monty (@scottmonty) and his team at Ford have taken the art of storytelling a step further.

In his moving (yes I said moving) keynote, Scott walked the audience through some of Ford’s most recent and innovative campaigns. In many of these campaigns the story is told not from the perspective of Ford, but from that of the consumer. Below you’ll find more about the stories of these campaigns, the people who told them, and the lessons learned.”

On May 1, we were pleased to announce our visionary new mobile app concept for companies/organizations that integrates PR, social media and marketing platforms. On May 8, Business Wire, one of the leading business news wire services, announced a “powerful new integrated marketing and public relations platform for press release and marketing content.” As with our proposed 360̊ public relations, or Immersion Public Relations app, the Business Wire platform allows companies to “truly show off their news, photos, videos and provide an interactive experience to a larger online audience,” as well as to engage in other forms of popular social interaction (blog, post, comment, etc.).

While our small boutique PR firm doesn’t have the resources to compete with a global business brand such as Business Week [one of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway companies], we’re proud that our proprietary ideas and marketing savvy rival those of industry leaders. We’re happy to bring that expertise to work for your organization.

Lately the online media buzz has begun to shift from social media to mobility. Even talk of the emerging juggernaut Pinterest has begun to wane. Yet, in some ways social media and mobility go hand-in-hand: Both enable users to interact and engage creatively and directly in unprecedented ways. Whether mobility will overshadow social networking in coming months remains to be seen, but it’s clear mobility is offering new challenges and opportunities for PR practice.

New Technology Creates New PR Opportunity

In recent weeks, we’ve been engaged in a number of conversations with colleagues examining media and digital technology trends. Consequently, we’ve spent a lot of time lately talking about our vision of where, and how, PR 2.0 & mobility converge. Our take on the point of intersection is a concept we alternately call “immersion public relations,” and 360̊ public relations.*

Immersion PR

In our view, mobility, and its ever-growing stable of related user applications (apps), provides companies with an unparalleled opportunity to showcase the best of who they are as a brand, seamlessly integrating all platforms. This means customers/users can immerse themselves in key aspects of all company-related marketing content–including proprietary Web sites, product showcases, social networking, corporate video, electronic newsrooms (e.g., press releases, advisories & annual reports), traditional media coverage, blogs, etc.— in one-stop-shop fashion, creating the most complete marketing experience the company can provide. Moreover, companies are able to control this changing mix of content , updating it periodically, as dynamics change within the organization or brand.

We also think of this new PR “app” concept as 360̊ public relations,* referring not only to the broad showcase of content, but to the experience of the user being enveloped in the digital space by every conceivable conception of a company the user can imagine. We envision this as a singular experience, more dynamic, and therefore more compelling for customers/users than experiencing the same content on separately accessed platforms.

At MediaWorks, we are embracing and moving into mobile technology to better serve PR clients, so we’ll be actively engaged on “R&D” for “immersion public relations” over the upcoming months. We invite you to join us in creating, sampling and developing this promising new technology. If you’re interested in immersion public relations* or 360̊ PR,* please feel free to let us know how you like the concept, what you find useful or appealing about it, and what steps you may be taking to develop this new technology.

As always, you can reach us with a comment below, or on Facebook or Twitter.